A cooking tip from a non-cook: boldly announce your actions to fellow cooks as you add seasoning to the big pot.

Of course, one of the participants had been the floor of my Dart, where all the tools are sticky with dehydrated Red Hook.

T


he keg was of course no more today. It had died out sometime in the evening yesterday. That's pretty respectable beer consumption by the few who had participated. Of course, one of the participants had been the floor of my Dart, where all the tools are sticky with dehydrated Red Hook. Another was the front porch, where Deya spilled an appalling amount. It's a little more fun to walk around in old beer than it is to step in the boy Jesse's puke (a legacy of Saturday which no one will ever clean off the front steps).

I rode my bike to the Corner and made a little use of the Internet at UVA's Cocke Hall. I hadn't been online for more than forty hours, since Saturday afternoon. That's some sort of personal record for recent unwiredness. This is a result of changes in my lifestyle since moving to the new place on Observatory Avenue. What's different?

• I stay home more and for longer periods. My friends all live with me and there's no reason to go anywhere. The few friends who don't live with me come over on their own.

• I go to Corner and UVA less, and am thus forced to do the bulk of my Internet work while at Comet, my place of employment.

• I drink even more than before. At the Dynashack I hardly drank at all during the week. Now I'm drunk for a piece of each and every day! This is the result of hanging out with my heavy-drinking housemates and the $2.99 Williamsburg Ale at the JPA Fastmart.

• I watch even more teevee than before. Chalk that up to Monster Boy's demented movie collection and the fact that I'm always hanging out with marginally employed couch-surfing teevee addicts.

• I eat more varied meals. Matthew and Zach like to cook (using mostly Matthew's supplies) and they're more than generous with the stuff they make.

B


ack home, the housemates were clustered on the couches as usual, watching yet more of Monster Boy's perverted videotape collection. This particular video included graphic footage of a sex change operation. I'm squeamish about such things and, instead of watching, preferred to try to get a Model 80 PS/2 with a dead lithium battery to boot. IBM doesn't make it easy on the man who would try to salvage vintage computers. PS/2s need "reference disks"- a sort of startup disk- for every card installed. Tracking these down on the internet can be a time consuming nightmare.

I ran all sorts of nice little errands today. I took the keg back to the JPA Fastmart and called my dentist (it turns out that my insurance company, Ameritas, had never received a claim --blame Kafka!). Then I went shopping and purchased the ways and means for the preparation of Chinese food: bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and little abortive ears of corn.

Matthew Hart was of the opinion that, what with all the whiskey (including the half gallon left behind by my mother after her most recent visit) we should be drinking Manhattans. Matthew has an interesting way of pronouncing the word "Manhattans" that I wish I could reproduce here in text form. He says something like "Man. ha!tENz." Peggy, Zach and Matthew rode with me in the infamous Dart to get the makings for Manhattans: bitters and vermouth. The JPA Fastmart couldn't help us this time. We had to go to Barracks Road.

Otherwise the successes were inevitable: golden brown onions and mushrooms gleaming with soy sauce on noodles dripping with tofu, green peppers, water chestnuts and ... you get the idea.

S


ince well into my 1992-1994 relationship with the beautiful but strangely underachieving Leslie Montalto, I have perfected the cooking of a single dish: stir-fried pasta with vegetables. I've had all sorts of successes and failures with it. Usually the failures resulted from overcooked pasta. Otherwise the successes were inevitable: golden brown onions and mushrooms gleaming with soy sauce on noodles dripping with tofu, green peppers, water chestnuts and ... you get the idea.

Today, Matthew and I prepared a variation of this dish using three packages of ramen, all the oriental (sorry if that term is offensive, but that's what Kroger calls 'em) vegetables I'd bought, mushrooms, a particularly sob-inducing onion, and the details such as oil and soy sauce. The end result was agreeably delicious but of course I hadn't made nearly enough for the hungry mouths that my house contains.

I was pretty drunk by the time I crawled off to bed.

Most interestingly, one drunken night Allie had also done the complete "hey now" with Matthew Hart.

I


've been telling Leah perhaps a few too many secrets, it seems. You see, in the late summer of 1995, I had an exclusively sex-based relationship with a certain Allie Vining, her Gemini best friend. In the course of this "relationship" I found out many little nuggets of gossip about Allie's sex life, including that she'd done "stuff" with the appallingly disgustin' Josh Mustin and that she'd "done it" with then-stud-boy Raphæl in the days before genital warts swept through the city. Most interestingly, one drunken night Allie had also done the complete "hey now" with Matthew Hart. I didn't know that Leah didn't know...

When he came home tonight, Matthew was apparently so pissed off about my revelation that he tried to wake me up during my pre-work nap!

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An additional comment about Guided by Voices' Magnificent Earwhig: it may be the best GBV album to date, but I'm disturbed by the creeping infection of a blues influence that I detect in songs like "Bulldog Skin." Those cock-rockers who have invaded GBV may know just a little too much for the good of the band.

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